Social media scheduling

Posted by Katie Porter

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Handing over the keys to your social media accounts to an external agency can be a scary thought, which is where social media scheduling platforms come in.

We, as a full service digital agency with a variety of clients, know that different clients like to have different levels of control around the social media content that appears on their channels - which we totally understand!

The benefits of social media scheduling

In a busy business environment, it can be very easy to feel as though there are not enough hours in the day. Social media marketing can be extremely effective for businesses and through scheduling tools that are available, it can be completed in a very time effective way. When scheduling your content in advance, you are able to have a full overview of your day/week/month ahead and easily view the variety of messages that you have scheduled to go live. It may take a block of a couple of hours (depending on how many messages you want to be sent), but then you can relax knowing your content will be automatically sent whilst you carry on with your day to day tasks. It’s especially useful for posting content that is typically outside of your business hours, such as evenings and weekends.

Social media scheduling tools

To accommodate the needs of our various clients, we have been trialing and testing different social media scheduling tools to see what works best for us (and for them). There are multiple tools on offer, but we were looking for one that would allow us to publish across multiple platforms for multiple clients and have a customisable approval process. The tool that we found to be the most effective and that allows us the most flexibility with the range of clients we work with, is GAIN.

What is GAIN?

GAIN works as a social media traffic manager, notifying the designated users of drafted content, gathers feedback from clients and moves the social posting process along until everything is approved and everyone involved is happy with the social media post.

Using the GAIN app, we as an agency can liaise with our clients and customise the approval workflow to suit their individual needs. For example, we can create the social content, the client can approve it and be the ones to press the button for the post to be scheduled, or they can add a comment to the post and send it back to us to modify.

Another feature of the GAIN app that we love is the calendar format which allows you to see all of the upcoming social content that is scheduled in a monthly format. This overview is great for seeing what days have what messages planned and the labels feature within the calendar allows you to add colour coded notes (we ♥ this) to each desired day. The visual effect of the calendar is great in allowing you to see at a quick glance at what is drafted, approved and what posts are live.

Food for thought

Whichever of the many social media scheduling tools you choose to use, having a platform that allows you to plan, approve and schedule social media content in advance is extremely useful and effective. Having one platform that can facilitate the needs of multiple clients and having all of the information stored in one place is great for everyone involved in social media marketing.

If you are looking to outsource your social media activity and want to talk more about working in partnership with a digital agency to get the most out of your social media channels, reach out to us today.